Perry making a bad call on sanctuary cities

Published 12:14 am, Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Gov. Rick Perry passed on a chance to strike a blow for moderation on Tuesday when he added “sanctuary cities” and other immigration measures to the special session agenda.

He also gave send-them-back lawmakers another chance to make 2011 a terrible year for public policy on immigration, not to mention Republican sensitivity to the Latino citizens of Texas.

Given the political dynamics at work here, I guess it's no surprise that exploitation of a red-meat political issue won the day. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was among those who'd been urging the governor to add immigration to the agenda. Coincidentally, he'll be running for another major office soon.

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Perry's decision is one more hint that he might be, too.

The problem is, other bills floating around the House and Senate go way beyond the governor's request. Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, has thrown in three bad ones all by herself.

Riddle, who learned during the regular session that camping out to file bills early isn't the key to getting them passed, now wants to make being in the U.S. illegally a state trespassing offense; make it a felony to knowingly hire a person who doesn't have permission to work in the United States; and require state agencies to report to the Legislature on how much state money is spent on illegal immigrants, including by local governments.

The latter proposal, which could be called the Paperwork Generation Act of 2011, resembles a bill offered during the regular session by Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, an otherwise reasonable lawmaker. It died then and should die now.

But now it's safe to assume that all three will be offered as special session amendments. Unless House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, finds a way to shoot them down on procedural grounds, the hard-liners could make the outcome really ugly.

The sad thing is, given the more extreme possibilities, Perry's original proposal wasn't as awful as it could've been. Sure, Texas isn't crawling with sanctuary cities (we have exactly one, the border town of El Cenizo, that has enacted a sanctuary policy). But his idea fell short of some of the more odious “reforms” enacted in other states.

The governor has said all along that he wanted to keep local officials from prohibiting officers from inquiring about someone's immigration status. On Tuesday, once again, he emphasized the need for local control.

But what happens if a police chief has a rogue officer who decides to hassle every dark-skinned person in his patrol area by asking for their papers? Under the proposal Perry supports, the chief, short of firing the officer, wouldn't be able to rein in the bad cop. So a bill that purports to give officers the tools they need would take that tool away.

Sorry, governor, that's not local control. And it's one more reason police chiefs in the state's major cities hate the idea.

A more important reason is that Perry's proposal would make people afraid to report crimes such as domestic abuse. If someone has brought their abuela over to spend her last days with the family, they might hesitate to report a real emergency.

“It's not the politics, it's the pragmatic outcome of what this will do,” said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus this week. “I've been around long enough and working with communities enough to know what causes distrust, and what causes people to lose faith in the police department, and I can tell you that this is one of them.”

By adding immigration to the special session agenda, the governor has taken a lousy idea and given the extremists one more crack at making it worse.